Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday June 02, 2014 @12:07PM
from the towheaded-child dept.

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "For all those brunettes wishing they were naturally blond, a small genetic change could have made all the difference. Scientists have found that replacing one of DNA's four letters at a key spot in the genome shifts a particular gene's activity and leads to fairer hair. Not only does the work provide a molecular basis for flaxen locks, but it also demonstrates how changes in segments of DNA that control genes, not just changes in genes themselves, are important to what an organism looks like."

Maybe English is your 4th or 5th language, since you're obviously so smart, but something can't be 'very unrepresented'. Very doesn't work like that. Maybe you were thinking of very underrepresented, highly under-represented or something similar.

It is unfortunate that most people -- even modern Africans -- are unaware of the ancient achievements that came out of Africa.

Many of the modern high-school level concepts in mathematics were first developed in Africa -- as was the first method of counting. These concepts include division and multiplication of fractions and geometric formulas to calculate the area and volume of shapes. They also invented mathematical methods for measuring distances and the use of angles -- including dividing a circle into 360 degrees and an early estimate of pi.

Eight thousand years ago, people in present-day Zaire developed their own numeration system, as did Yoruba people in what is now Nigeria. The Yoruba system was based on units of 20 (instead of 10) and required an impressive amount of subtraction to identify different numbers. Scholars have lauded this system, as it required much abstract reasoning.

This is just in the area of mathematics. Several ancient African cultures birthed discoveries in astronomy. Many of these are foundations on which we still rely, and some were so advanced that their mode of discovery still cannot be understood. Egyptians charted the movement of the sun and constellations and the cycles of the moon. They divided the year into 12 parts and developed a yearlong calendar system containing 365 ¼ days. Clocks were made with moving water and sundial-like clocks were used.

Many advances in metallurgy and tool making were made across the entirety of ancient Africa. These include steam engines, metal chisels and saws, copper and iron tools and weapons, nails, glue, carbon steel and bronze weapons and art.

Advances in Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago surpassed those of Europeans then and were astonishing to Europeans when they learned of them. Ancient Tanzanian furnaces could reach 1,800C — 200 to 400C warmer than those of the Romans.

There are plenty of other examples in areas such as architecture, engineering, medicine and navigation.

"It is unfortunate that most people -- even modern Africans -- are unaware of the ancient achievements that came out of Africa. "People tend to calcify the situation of very recent history and project it earlier - it's as natural and understandable a tendency as it is regrettable. A longer term view would resolve these little bugbears easily.

The Europeans have been ascendant for a few hundred years, but before that it was a backwater. East and North Africa on the other hand are ancient population centres th

In all fairness, the help your wife receives may be due to being female moreso than being blonde. How attractive she is may also be a significant factor, although being blonde may make her appear more attractive to many.

Recently, there was an article that described blue eyes as the result of a genetic mutation. So I'm the world's most boring mutant: Blue Eyed Guy. I have the powers of having blue eyes. All the time. I thought being a mutant would be more exciting than this.

If memory serves the suggestion was made in the article that the same sequence is responsible for both blondes and redheads, by lightening the underlying color, which without lightening comes out brunette either way.

Originally, "gene" meant "heritable element". Outside of molecular biology, it still does. That DNA can encode the construction of protein was the first connection molecular biologists discovered from genotype to phenotype. This caused them to mistakenly redefine "gene", because they supposed it was the only connection. Since they have now found other kinds of heritable elements in DNA, it is time for them to revert to the older definition, and come up with some other term for the subset of genes that encode protein.

ORF (Open Reading Frame) is typically used for the case you described, and has been for some time now.

I don't think that's what I'm getting at. To switch to a different set of metaphors, "ORF" is a syntactic term while "gene" is a semantic term. Only a subset of ORFs are transcribed, as I understand it. A sequence of letters and spaces ending with a period is not necessarily a meaningful sentence.

In any case, the original article claimed that blondness was not controlled by a "gene". But by the old definition of "gene" that's nonsense. Someone working in, say, evolutionary dynamics would certainly call the

The ENCODE project has shown that effectively every piece of DNA is transcribed at some level. All ORFs are transcribed, but we don't always know a function/meaning associated with them. We keep finding transcribed sequences to be important which we had previously attributed to noise. There are even proteins with well-recognized functions that appear to have been derived from random noise-sequences.

There isn't a need to switch to metaphor with such a simple concept as this and doing so only confuses your m

Someone in molecular and computational biology (like me) would also call the controlling element a gene. Science journalism is far too often full of such odd definitions and misunderstandings.

The "gene encodes a protein" idea still seems quite common in educational efforts that at least *ought* to have real scientists behind them. See, for example, page 4 of http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Ed... [genome.gov]. One who monitors the science news also will frequently encounter press releases like "We sequenced organism X's genome and it contains (pick a number) genes, compared to the (human gene count du jour)." Presumably molecular biologists provided these numbers, but they appear to refer to protein coding sequen

This is complete and utter bullshit. Just look at chimps, which are born with black hair that greys (i.e. gets lighter) as they age. Same with gorillas. Or arctic animals, such as foxes and hares, which have white hair during the winter and darker (usually brown) hair during the mating season.

When we look at humans, most races only have black and very dark brown hair. So why would there be any hard-wired preference for a trait that doesn't exist? Furthermore, if you were right, wouldn't middle/upper class w

Queen Elizabeth I put lead-based white-paint on her face because she didn't want to look "tan" like people who work outdoors for a living.

Then the tan was a status symbol meaning you could travel to foreign countries. Now it's a symbol that you're a cheap holiday maker / self-tanner who goes just for the look of the thing and, thus, it's out of fashion.

It's never as simple as "trait X is more attractive", even in genetics.

In addition, before bottles of hydrogen peroxide became available, blonde hair in females could be interpreted as an honest signal of youth and therefore reproductive fitness. This is because postmenopausal women rarely retain the flaxen locks of their youth, of course eventually becoming grey grannies.
Interestingly, Aboriginal tribes have evolved blonde hair in females independently of the Nordic blonde.3 As this has occurred in an environment not lacking UVB this suggests that sexual selection ha

Flaxen/blonde hair isn't a signal of youth of most cultures, because it simply doesn't happen, It might work as a signal of youth in a subset of European cultures or in Australian/Melanesian (as you note).

The blonde hair of Australian/Melanesian peoples isn't just in the females, though it is more prominent in females. That it isn't consistent with the UV-vitaminD hypothesis doesn't suggest sexual selection is involved, only that UV-selection isn't involved.

Every human being on the planet is more attracted to light colored hair than dark

One, and only one, of the following is true:

1. You personally interviewed every single one of the 7 billion people currently living on Earth - individually and confidentially, with the assistance of a magically infallible lie detector - and confirmed their preference for light hair over dark.

The stupid blond is probably based on the following.Being Blond is a rare trait. Such a trait we find interesting and somewhat attractive as it encourages genetic adversity.Being that the blond shows genetic diversity, there are more people willing to mate with them,Being that they are more people are willing to mate, there is less of a need to differentiate themselves as superior or better, so they follow the simplest route.

A large portion of our actions is about being attractive to the other sex. Even if

If you in particular can attract and mate easier chances are you will follow a simpler route on average and not try harder.

This doesn't follow. Even if your choices are good, you're still driven to excel and expand your pool of mates to the max. We aren't just wired to find any old mate... We are wired to try to get the MOST and BEST mates.

Neither men nor women are naturally (completely) monogamous, so finding ONE mate isn't sufficient. But more than that, everyone wants to find THE BEST mate possible.

Now, where the heck do the blonde jokes come from? I've never seen any association between stupidity or airheadedness with blonde people.

It was around 1988 or late 80's when Blond joke started in my area and group (BBS'ers), there are some great jokes that vein.

Trying to answer your question I came across this gem:

"The researchers found that the blond-haired applicant was rated as significantly less capable than her brunette doppelganger. In addition, participants designated the female applicant’s starting salary as significantly lower when she was depicted as a blonde than when she was shown with brown hair." (sic) http://en.wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Probably from the genetic metabolic disorder Phenylketonuria (PKU) [wikipedia.org]. This enzyme failure, if untreated by a phenylaline-restricted diet, leads to a constelation of symptoms that include mental deficiency, blonde or light hair, and blue eyes.

Interestingly, one of Hitler's pre-war programs was an attempt to breed more blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Germans. The main result was a drastic increase in the prevalence of PKU in the German population.

Rs12821256 [snpedia.com], genotype (C;C) has "2x higher likelihood of blond hair" according to SNPedia (based on earlier work), but this new article claims [blogspot.jp] the G allele is associated with blonde hair. Not sure what that means...

This story is a bit too much inside-ball to be interesting, but still, I'm surprised they didn't say anything about the link between blonde and red hair... Though not exclusive, it seems rare to find someone with blonde hair, without a red-haired ancestor. Even as much of a recessive trait as blonde hair may be, red hair is even more extreme, and the two seem very closely linked.

Anyone who watches movies knows about the blond bad-guy [vdare.com] and the blonde goddess [dailymakeover.com]. This blond gene apparently has pleiotropic [wikipedia.org] effects that make men disgusting scum-of-the-earth and women the object of every man's desire.